Shirakawa trial on illegal campaign tactics likely to be delayed

By Tracey Kaplan tkaplan@mercurynews.com

Posted:
03/13/2014 07:41:13 AM PDT

Updated:
03/13/2014 03:53:44 PM PDT

Claiming chances are slim that jailed former supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. can get a fair shake in Santa Clara County, his lawyer plans to ask a judge to move his upcoming trial on a campaign fraud charge to a different county where there's been less publicity about it, according to court documents.

That request -- coupled with the lawyer's claim he needs more time to dispute the DNA evidence against his client and review thousands of pages of bank records and other documents -- makes it probable that Shirakawa's trial will be delayed from April 1 until at least August, prosecutor John Chase said.

"I will not be able to provide Mr. Shirakawa effective assistance at trial as currently scheduled," his lawyer Jay Rorty wrote in his request for more time. Rorty did not respond to requests for comment.

Shirakawa, 51, is currently serving a year in Alameda County jail after pleading guilty last year to lying on campaign finance reports and using public money to fund his gambling habit. He now faces an additional felony charge -- that he engaged in illegal campaign tactics in 2010 to get his friend Xavier Campos elected to the San Jose City Council.

If Shirakawa succeeds in postponing his trial, the delay could inadvertently benefit Campos by keeping the case out of the news during the June primary, improving his chances of winning outright against two challengers.

However, if Campos is still forced into a November runoff, the trial focusing on allegations that Shirakawa committed dirty tricks on his behalf might unfold close to the election. Campos insists he knew nothing about the matter.

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The decision over whether to postpone the trial will be considered April 1 by the presiding judge of the criminal division of Santa Clara County Superior Court, Judge Thang N. Barrett.

Shirakawa is expected to be released in May from Alameda County jail.

The new case stems from a DNA sample Shirakawa submitted when he was arrested last year on the first set of charges. Prosecutors say that tests matched Shirakawa's DNA to that found on an illegal political piece mailed out in the 2010 San Jose City Council race between Campos, Shirakawa's former policy aide, and child advocate Magdalena Carrasco.

The deceitful flier illegally claimed to come from Carrasco's campaign and portrayed her as a communist -- enraging local Vietnamese in the district who had fled from a communist government in their country. Carrasco lost the primary race by just 20 votes and is running again against Campos this June.

In his motion to postpone the trial, Rorty said a defense expert hired to help Shirakawa explore a change of venue is likely to need up to 14 weeks to conduct and analzye a telephone survey of county residents to determine how familiar they are his fall from grace.

However, the last time a change of venue was granted in Santa Clara County was in 1980, when the county population -- and thus the jury pool -- was smaller. That's when the so-called San Jose Cheese Company murder trial involving the local Mafia was moved to Los Angeles County.

According to Rorty's court motion, other defense experts need time to complete their own analysis of the prosecution's most incriminating evidence, the presence of Shirakawa's DNA on the self-adhesive stamp. In particular, the experts will be looking into the results of a second set of DNA tests the prosecution did on a portion of the incriminating stamp or another item that yielded a "a mixed sample of at least two people," with Shirakawa as a "possible source," according to the motion.

The defense also plans to file a motion to suppress evidence seized during a raid on the Shirakawa family home last year that prosecutors have said implicates the former supervisor, including sales receipts.

In a less predicatable move, Rorty wants the prosecution's DNA records on a one-time defendant in another case, the 2012 killing of Monte Sereno millionaire Ravi Kumra. The former defendant, Lukis Anderson, a was arrested with four others on homicide charges in Kumra's death, based on evidence of Anderson's DNA found under Kurma's fingernail.

But charges were dropped against Anderson last year after prosecutors learned that his DNA was transferred to Kumra's fingernail by paramedics, who had used the same finger pulse-reader on Anderson during an emergency call hours before assisting Kumra. Defense experts generally claim the case bolsters the argument that the DNA of a person who was not involved in a crime can be transferred to the scene of the crime by someone else.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report. Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport

Bay City News Service contributed to this report. Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport